How Will You Respond?

3 Aug

“The less you respond to rude, critical, argumentative people the more peaceful your life becomes.”  ~ Mandy Hale

Sometimes it does more good to speak to a wall than it does to a person.  There are just some people who refuse to listen to others and who only speak to others in order to argue their own point.  They never carry conversation with others.  Rather, they just speak out their own agenda and, when they are finished saying everything that they want to say, they walk away or shut down and refuse to listen.

These are people that we need to ignore because there is no way to speak with them logically.  If we choose to attempt a discussion, we will only become incredibly frustrated.  Some might say that it would be uncharitable to ignore such people.  You know what they say, though, “charity begins at home.”  Why should we go through the motions of speaking with someone knowing that all they will do is rile us up and destroy our inner peace?  Instead, we need to care for ourselves and resist responding to them.

Because we do not engage with them does not mean that we have to ignore them completely, though.  Instead of responding to them and becoming upset and unsettled, we can spend time in prayer for them because they truly need it.  People who are constantly argumentative generally are so because they are unsettled within.  They do not have peace of mind.  They do not have strength of character.  Instead of showing themselves to be weak or insecure, they show themselves as loud, or argumentative, or arrogant.

Such a person needs prayer, not argument.  Such a person needs love, not hatred.  Such a person needs to find God in their own tattered and broken life.  Pray that they may find inner peace and even God Himself.  Wouldn’t that be much better than spending an hour arguing?

FAITH ACTION:  Instead of engaging with rude, critical, argumentative people today, pray for them that their cold and stony hearts may be softened by God’s love.